The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Dame Pauline Tallen, has described the current efforts by the Federal Government to promote digital transactions in the country as hurting rural women and the vulnerable groups based on the costs of e-transactions they bear on trading and other business activities.
The Minister, who made this remark on Wednesday during the 4th DBN’s Annual International Women’s Day celebration with the theme ‘#DigitAll: Innovation and Technology for Gender Equality’ held in Abuja, pointed out that though advancements in digital technology offered immense opportunities to address development and humanitarian challenges and to achieve the 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs), digital technology was further worsening the gender inequalities in Nigeria as women continued to bear the brunt.
Citing practical experiences of rural women on the Naira redesign policy implementation to justify her stance, Tallen lamented that millions of rural MSME traders and business owners were losing so much value in money due to charges by Point of Sale (PoS) operators and other finance institutions, who are taking advantage of their helplessness to exploit them.
She clarified: “As good as the policy is, in the long run the immediate concern is the growing inequalities which are becoming increasingly evident in the context of digital skills and access to technologies with women being left behind as a result of this digital gender divide.
“Typical examples are the rural or urban vegetable seller whose total goods are worth less than two thousand and sells a unit for one hundred Naira. For instance, assuming you buy two thousand naira worth of vegetables from her and she agrees for you to make a transfer, you are charged a transfer fee, by the bank, when she’s withdrawing it she’s also charged a fee leading to the devaluation of her goods and loss of income.
“This explains why the average market woman does not believe in this cashless policy and remains resistant to accepting the change. What will you say of the POS operator who controls the economy for want of cash, you want N5000 and you have to pay close to N2000 as charges?”, she queried.
Describing inclusive and transformative technology and digital education in Nigeria as crucial for a sustainable future, the minister stressed the need for all stakeholders to collaborate to find an easy way out of the growing inequalities which have left women poorer by creating assess to the use of digital devices, Internet and content to mainstream women into the digital space.
